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After having a look at the more specific driver issues related to installing the latest version of Ubuntu linux on my Toshiba Tablets, it’s time to have a more general – and, hopefully, useful to more readers – look at what’s new and what needs to be changed in this new install. Obviously, I’m building upon my previous install notes (10.10).

I’ve no idea what Unity is doing and why is messing with the Systray: it seems the Gnome has pushed the concept of “clean desktop” and “hiding crap from the user” so far that it makes users like me feel like Alice in Wonderland with pedophile rabbits. Not good. Anyway, here’s what I was able to gather on fixing the damn thing..

To further customize Unity 3D you need to instal CCSM, sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager; if anything goes wrong and want to reset run

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1 unity --reset

..(or just unit-reset for Unity)

Some old, familiar apps may no longer appear in the tray, where you expect them to be.

For Unity 2D, the story is long. Now, there may be other new apps you want to install, but what about the old ones? As it turns out, they will not show up in the new “indicator” thingie unless you trick it. QT-based apps (Skype, VLC) show by default because of sni-qt which will convert automatically systray icons into indicators. The systray is still available for Wine, Java, scp-dbus-service and Update-notifier only but you can whitelist all applications ( gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']" ) just like in Ubuntu 11.04 - and that bug that caused the non-clickable indicators issue seems to have been fixed. To whitelist selectively, replace ‘all’ with the app names separated by coma, e.g., 'Wine', 'Skype' etc.

The above can also be accomplished using a GUI tool called dconf-editor, part of dconf-tools. Once installed, run dconf-editor then navigate to desktop > unity > panel and to enable the Notification Area (Systray) for all applications, enter: [‘all’].

To reset, run gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray']" or click on “Set to default” in dconf-editor.

All these complications (on a shell that prides on making it all simple) made me want to try KDE.

0. Gnome Shell

For going beyond Unity, try Gnome:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell gnome-tweak-tool

Gnome tweak tool is optional but very useful. For shell extensions, try:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3 sudo apt-get update

If using Gnome Shell, you’ll also have to fix Alt+F2 which does not work by default by going to System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > System.

To move icons from the message tray (at the bottom, hidden by default) to the topbar,

get location code from weather.com: e.g., Toronto is CAXX0504, Bucharest is ROXX0003

gedit ~/.conkyrc and replace BRXX0232 with the code above

replace "gap_y 10" with "gap_y 40"

on line 52, there is some code that looks like this: "${time %e} de ${time %B} de ${time %G}" - remove both "de" instances

To add Conky HTC to startup, open "Startup Applications", click "Add", under "Name" enter "Conky HTC" and for the command, select "Browse", hit CTRL + H to see hidden files and select the ".conky_start.sh" file from your home directory.

Too much trouble, I know. If using Gnome Shell, try its weather extension:

same PPA as above as well as official, indicator-sensors will display temperature and fan speed

System Monitor indicator will display system CPU and memory usage in the panel (PPA: indicator-sysmonitor) – this may work only on 11.04

System Load Indicator is a port of the old Monitor Applet without the tooltips ( ppa:indicator-multiload/stable-daily ) then install indicator-multiload.

There may be more, but in Gnome Shell, which I might install shortly.

3. Radio

I like to have my Soma.FM radio stations in Banshee. I tried RadioTray but I messed up the choice – should’ve chosen second option – App indicator, so I purged it. Here’s what the .pls files contain:

[480] File1=http://mp1.somafm.com:8080 Title1=SomaFM: 480 Minutes (#1 128 mp3): Live Every Friday: What alternative rock radio would sound like had Nirvana never happened. File2=http://voxsc1.somafm.com:9090 Title2=SomaFM: 480 Minutes (#2 128 mp3): Live Every Friday: What alternative rock radio would sound like had Nirvana never happened. File3=http://ice.somafm.com/480min Title3=SomaFM: 480 Minutes (Firewall-friendly 128 mp3) Live Every Friday: What alternative rock radio would sound like had Nirvana never happened.

4. Wifite

As this is my laptop, I sometimes need to perform security audits of wireless networks. I don’t bother carrying around Backtrack after me everywhere (though I have it installed on another M200), but wifite is good to have, for those times when you need to show a client how simple it is to break through a WEP-secured wireless network or (WPA with bad password). Here’s how I do this:

Then place the firmware the the new directory RTL8192SU we will create in /lib/firmware/

mkdir /lib/firmware/RTL8192SU;

mv <download_directory>/rtl8192sfw.bin /lib/firmware/RTL8192SU/;

My single USB / single antenna USB adapter based on another Realtek chip worked out of the box.

5. Ubuntu ONE and online office

You can never get too much storage, and Ubuntu One (U1), now available also for Windows iPhone and Android, comes with 5 GB. I immediately login and some of the stuff I have to download (wifite, boxee) is synced from the cloud. There is now a Backup app – deja-dup - that can backup your data to U1. U1 also has the ability to save your app configuration (OneConf) so that you can easily replicate it, it can save and stream your music, your notes from TomBoy and your Google Contacts. It will prompt you to install two other packages and some services must be enabled from the website.

We will look at online storage in depth in a separate article. Until then though, if you have qualms about Google omnipresence and want to ditch Google Docs, consider Zoho, which Canonical is working on integrating in Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install webservice-office-zoho

This will open documents using your default browser. Zoho has the advantage of not requiring login. Also, if you want to similarly replace your desktop email client with webmail via your default browser, sudo apt-get install desktop-webmail and change it under Preferred Applications.

6. Nautilus Terminal

After configuring my shared network drives it took me quite a while to find out how to bookmark them – it’s a plus button at the bottom of the window.

If Nautilus crashes it’s usually because of the following package which would need to be removed:

Here’s what I usually install (in a sudo apt-get install line or via the Software whatever, where unfortunately you cannot queue as in Synaptic): gparted + addons (kpartx ntfsprogs gpart), 7zip, epiphany-browsergnome-sushipintaphotofilmstripxournal wine openshot pidgin truecrypt cheese (hover for comments)

If you ever build stuff you will also need to install the necessary tools:

apt-get install build-essential fakeroot devscripts

Better install them now, when I’m connected to the ‘net, as there is a small chance I might need to install something from a local archive without my ‘net connection.

Accustomed to install PDF printer in Windows, I was looking for one for Linux, forgetting that Ubuntu allows me to print to file straight to PDF.

picasa

Although Pinta is quite advanced and should suffice, for tighter integration with Google (PIcasaweb) you might want to install PIcasa. Unfortunately, the Linux version, currently at 3.0 lags behind the Windows version, currently at 3.8. There is however a trick to use the latest version under linux with maximum interoperability. It involves installing the latest linux version and then installing the Windows version on top of it, with Wine.

The missing features are:

Camera/media detection integrated with Gnome/KDE.

Mozilla/Firefox browser integration done via a plugin.

picasa:// urls work in Firefox 3.

Downloading albums from Picasa Web Albums launches faster.

Xinerama support.

You will need the Google Testing PPA, hopefully installed in the repos step above. If not,

Speed Dreams

Wallpaper Changer

There’s a few wallpaper changers, but this one has the option of showing you live Earth as well:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:wallch/wallch-ppa

Then, as usual, upd & inst wallch

Installing tor browser

Many people ensure their privacy / anonymity by using a VPN. Why bother though, when you have TOR? The Onion Router is best when it comes to ensure privacy, though granted, it can be slow at times. On my laptop, I prefer the temporary install (tor browser) to the permanent one.

Installing the TOR browser bundle is as simple as going to their download page and choosing the one that suits you. Also, don’t forget to right click the sig and save it along with the main download. The bundle comes as a “directory agnostic” archive (.tar.gz) which you download to your Download or Desktop directories. To check the sig, you need to mess with gpg:

Needless to say, this is not tamper-proof, which begs the question why do you do it, then? :)

To install, perform the following:

Right-click the .tar.gz ball and expand to the directory of your choice (such as ~/bin or /usr/local/bin/). Personally, I prefer to do this from a Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window with tar xvf tor[TAB].

Rename the directory to something shorter (you don’t have to, but uh, baby, that’s what I like).

Copy or move the “startor” script to a directory in your path, then gedit it to cd to the right directory. The line you’re looking for is # Try to be agnostic to where we’re being started from, chdir to where # the script is.

9. Make Ubuntu look like Mac or Windows

If you’d rather, understandably, go for the Mac look, use mac4lin or the macbuntupackage.

10. Power (regression) bug and Jupiter

Phoronix has reported on a Linux starting to use significantly more power than Windows and they believe it to be a bug. Here’s their fix:

In /etc/default/grub find GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" and add pcie_aspm=force within the quotes so that it becomes GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force" then run sudo update-grub.

Phoronix has also checked performance against Windows and found (as one would expect) that the video cards performed far worse under Linux, with nVidia having the closest performance and ATI + Intel behind.

Jupiter might also help with power consumptionas well as a number of other improvements such as tablet rotation; it is an applet designed for netbooks and laptops that helps you switch between maximum and high performance and power saving mode, change the resolution and orientation, enable or disable the bluetooth, touchpad, WiFi and so on. If you own an Asus EeePC netbook, there's also a separate package that adds support for Asus Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) as well as some other EeePC tweaks.

11. Install SIP VoIP app

I was under the impression that the best SIP VoIP client for linux was sflphone. Sadly, they don’t have an Oneiric repo as of now which makes install a bit difficult.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:savoirfairelinux

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sflphone-client-gnome

Another good choice is Jitsi (Twinkle is good especially if you’re using KDE). With Jitsi, installing the .deb will also add the repositories. As detailed in an earlier article on SIP / VoIP softphones or recording, other free softphones offering call recording are Homer (OSS), PhonerLite (Windows only), SightSpeed (Win+Mac), Voice Op Panel (Windows only).

If you don’t need advanced features like call recording, you might as well stay with Empathy, the Pidgin replacement, installed by default.

12. Java

I don’t really use Java so I don’t miss it, but if you do, here’s 2 ways to install it:

13. Disable IPv6

It may not seem like a good idea, with the often announced death of IPv4, but I have yet to find a situation where I needed IPv6. To disable it, add at the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf: blacklist ipv6

What do YOU like to do with a fresh install (other than eyecandy stuff, which I don’t care much about)? Did I miss anything?